


It's Soporil Time, Junpei: A Data Analysis On How Much (Or Little) 999 Characters Speak And Why

by Pent



Category: 999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors - Fandom
Genre: 999 Spoilers, Analysis, Meta, Nonfiction, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 19:53:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8222918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pent/pseuds/Pent
Summary: In which I analyze the amount of dialogue spoken by each of the nine characters in 999. Yes, even the 9th Man. Why do some characters speak more or less than others?





	

### What even is this?

With such a wonderful and diverse cast, I was curious to compare how many times each character speaks in 999. Are there major differences in how talkative some characters are? Is Junpei as much as a blabbermouth as he seems? I did some research, because why not?!

This data accounts for all endings and all spoken dialogue in the game, including unlabeled top screen dialogue (e.g. when a character’s name box says “???”) as well as the beginning of the game when Junpei gives the rest of the cast nicknames.

How did I collect this data? A lot of counting, a lot of reading, some simple programming, and [NorseFTX’s Game Script](https://www.gamefaqs.com/ds/961351-nine-hours-nine-persons-nine-doors/faqs/61629). Also a spice of nerdiness because why in the world would anyone do this? Why did I do this??

This data is **based on the number of text boxes** that appear on the **top screen** for each character, rather than the number of words they each speak. That would probably be a lot more accurate, but I certainly don’t have time to count that up.

Another important thing to note is that **Young Akane’s (June's) bottom screen narration is not included in this data.**

Let's get right into it!

### Data time

Because who doesn't love colorful pie charts? The chart on the awkward, north-east right (depending on your resolution) shows the rounded percentages of how many text boxes each character has in the game. I even color coded the slices to match each character, so we have Kubota (the 9th man) and his weird sliver of a grape jacket up there.

Junpei, a whopping 33% of all top screen dialogue spoken, is present during every moment of the game since you play him. Sort of. And Kubota, the man, the legend, the sour grape himself—eats himself a nice little bomb sandwich about thirty minutes into every single route of the game. So it makes sense that these two are so far off from the others.

Other major things take away from this chart:

  1. Seven talks a lot. I was certainly surprised. Why is this? I'm going to guess that it has something to do with the two times he tells the story of the first Nonary Game in the sub ending and true ending.
  2. _Snake_ talks a lot. Considering how he's not in most routes of the game, that 7% is pretty surprising. He rambles a lot when he is present, and we all love him for it.
  3. Junpei, the 9th man, and potentially Snake all have valid reasons to be skewed away from the rest of the cast. If we exclude them, the other characters don't have much of a significant difference between in how much they blab. Very interesting.



Have some more detailed data. The graph below shows the number of text boxes rather than the percentage. You can see the Junpei and Kubota outliers better.  

Considering how our no-exceptions range of characters (June, Ace, Lotus, Clover Santa, and Seven), Seven sure does talk  _a lot_. 4% higher than the next two chatty characters, Santa and Clover.

Also, notice that Clover and Lotus both have exactly 1,091 text boxes. Take that as you will. 

~~[muffled X-Files theme.midi]~~

I must say that I'm mildly disappointed that none of the characters ended up with 999 text boxes. Now _that_ would be a conspiracy worthy of pestering Uchikoshi about on Twitter.

### But Pent, this data looks weird

It very well might be weird. There's a ton of different ways one could have collected this data. Also, I suck at math. There are probably mistakes in this.

I didn't factor in how much actual screen time each character has. Relative to to how many text boxes they have, this is a crucial aspect to finding out how much they really speak. As an obvious example from the data above, Snake’s measly 7% is so low because he was “dead” to Junpei (haha) in all but two endings. But considering that he's only in door 5, the safe ending, and the true ending, that's actually a lot compared to someone like June, who had a lot more screen time and talked to Junpei more when they were alone.

Why did I excluded young Akane’s bottom screen dialogue? I'm assuming it would have overtaken the spoken dialogue of the other characters in the present by such a large margin that the rest of this data would be useless. I’m really curious to see how true or false that is, but I'm not going to investigate because it would take a whole lot of work to fish out all that text. Yikes! (That may or may not be the real reason why I didn't include it.)

Again, this data is purely based on text boxes rather than the number words spoken by each character. Using text boxes could have left us with some misleading data. Some characters may use shorter, choppy phrases that leave them with more textboxes in the end, while other characters just dump info on you and ramble about spooky science. Less text boxes, more words.

It's a lot to factor in, and if I was some kind of creature that didn't require sleep, you better believe I would have done this by word count _and_  the number of text boxes.

One more thing: the script I used did not repeat any rooms of the game based on route. Every room was only accounted for once, each ending was only accounted for once. Obviously, this isn't an accurate portrayal of a normal playthrough of 999, where you play the game over and over again to get all the routes. If you're looking for that, this data will be funky. 

### Why does any of this matter?

Although there's a ton reasons why this data could be inaccurate, I hope that it gives us at least a vague idea of how evenly the dialogue is split between the cast of 999. Without our two biggest outliers Junpei and Kubota, everyone gets to speak their mind about as much as anyone else.

Each of the eight characters in this game are extremely well-written and characterized. I'm glad that my data doesn't show a significant rift between how much they all say. It sure doesn't feel like anyone's left behind in-game, and I believe that in a visual novel, dialogue plays a huge role in characterization. The more a character speaks, the more we learn about them.

Anyone alive, I should say. Sorry, Kubota. 

Thanks for reading and feel free to yell at me in the comments.


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